The Harris-Ingram Experiment eBook

After the committee retired, the mayor said, “Well,
Colonel Harris, what will be the outcome?”

“Mr. Mayor, we cannot foretell anything.
You never know what workingmen in their lodges will
do. There, as a rule, the ‘Walking delegate’
and a few agitators rule with despotic power.
If a workman, whose large family forces him to take
conservative views, dares in his lodge to suggest
peaceful measures, an agitator rises at once in indignation
and demands that traitors to the cause of labor be
expelled. This throttles freedom of action in
many labor unions, so that often what appears on the
surface to be the unanimous action of the members
of workingmen’s leagues, is but the exercise
of despotic power by a few men who have nothing to
lose, and whose salary is paid from the slim purses
of honest labor.

“Usually those who talk much and loudly think
little and unwisely, and the opposite to their advice
is safest to follow. The greatest need to-day
in most of our labor organizations is wise leadership,
and this will result when the best element in the
labor lodges asserts itself.

“The despotism of ill-advised labor is to be
dreaded by civilization more than the reign of intelligent
capital. This is especially true in the United
States, where under wise laws, wealth cannot be entailed,
and where most large fortunes soon disappear among
the heirs.

“A simple pair of shears illustrates perfectly
the relationship that capital and labor should sustain
each to the other. Capital is one blade of the
shears, and labor is the other blade; either blade
without the other is useless, and the two blades are
useless unless the rivet is in place. Confidence
is to capital and labor what the rivet is to the two
blades. The desideratum to-day in the business
world is full and abiding confidence between capital
and labor.” Thus speaking Colonel Harris
and his friends left the mayor and returned to their
homes.

* * * *
*

After a visit to Niagara Falls, Mr. Searles and his
party went on to Harrisville, where Mrs. Eastlake
rejoined some friends and continued her long journey
to the Pacific Coast. Colonel Harris met his daughter
and Mr. Hugh Searles at the station, the latter, under
the circumstances, being the last person he cared
to see. The carriage was driven at once to Reuben
Harris’s beautiful home that overlooked Harrisville
and blue Lake Erie.

After dinner Colonel Harris explained to Mr. Searles
all about the inopportune strike; also that it was
impossible to say when the steel plant would be started
again. Mr. Searles decided next morning that after
a short ride through Harrisville he would continue
his journey through the States to California, and
possibly to Australia, where he had another important
interest to attend to in behalf of a London client.

It was further arranged that he would return to London
via Harrisville in about six months, if so desired
by Colonel Harris, otherwise he would complete the
journey around the world, returning to England by way
of the Suez Canal.